Atomic Blonde – Movie Review

Atomic Blonde is directed by one of the directors of the first John Wick and stars Charlize Theron as a super badass spy in 1989, she is sent to Berlin to get a list and on this list, is some very important people that has been put out in the open and James McAvoy is trying to help her as well and she’s trying to protect certain people and she’s also telling this story to John Goodman and Toby Jones.

There are a lot of things going on in this story and the things that work the most about Atomic Blonde are its incredible style, it’s a beautifully shot movie, Charlize is excellent in this role and similar to John Wick, this director proves once again that he’s terrific at helming hand-to-hand combat scenes and car chases, he makes it all look wonderful and some of the same shunt people worked on this movie that made John Wick one and two.

When the action sequences are going down in particular a standout sequence inside a stairwell that eventually goes into the streets of Berlin this movie is a blast to watch, Charlize really kicks a lot of ass in the main title role, she clearly went through a lot of stunt training and she sells every single minute of it.

Sofia Boutella is also really good in this movie once again, although highly underutilized in this movie unfortunately, and James McAvoy once again is incredibly entertaining in this role.

But at the same time this movie is an incredibly disappointing movie because of its story, the way they tell its story and its pacing.

They choose to have Charlize in the very beginning to sit down and tell two people the story, and she’s covered in bruises and she’s got a black eye but she is sitting there telling us the story.

Because of that one thing all the tension is taking right out of this movie at the very beginning, it losers any stakes it might have had right from the beginning, and constantly going back to her telling the story brought the film to halt and they kept on doing that throughout the movie, also they were definitely trying to make the soundtrack standout and it did but probably not in the best way, it had a lot of choppy editing that was really noticeable.

My major issue with this movie is the final cut, you can tell there is a dam good movie here, but it’s told in a very convoluted and messy way with its flashback form and then flash-forward form and there’s a lot of music choices that became very overwhelming in the end.